6 Discordant Opinions of Chemists 



before 1 had witnessed the violent and incontrovertible effects of 

 oil ignited at (iOO degrees ; the vapour was lighted before it ar- 

 rived at that heat, but I have said 600 degrees because it did not 

 exceed that, the range of the thermometers terminating at that 

 point, and which were not found broken after the experiment was 

 finished. From a tube aliixed to the boiler the flame ascended 

 upwards of four feet in length, striking against the wooden roof 

 of the place where the experiment was tried, and which for some 

 considerable time baffled all the attempts to extinguish it, and 

 made everv one present seriously alarmed for the safety of the 

 building: the fire was raked out, pajls full of water were thrown 

 into the fire-place; wet cloths were put on the mouth of the tube, 

 to no purpose; the cover of some pot was at last placed upon it, 

 which dispersing the flamelaterally prevented its ascendingso high ; 

 and in that state it continued burning for some considerable time. 

 With this occurrence fresh in my mind, it was not to be wondered 

 at that I should have listened with astonishment when I heard it 

 asserted bv Dr. Thomson, whose authority I had always looked 

 up to with so much deference, that a fire twenty miles long 

 placed under such a boiler as the one used by the plaintiffs 

 could not make it dangerous. 



This experiuient, which I witnessed in company with those 

 gentlemen who were snbpaniaed on the part of the defendants, 

 by the invitation of Mr. P. Taylor, at whose laboratory it was 

 made, was one of many others tried by them, and all of which 

 were attended bv the same results. This it may be said is as- 

 sertion against assertion ; but the fact, whether the vapour of 

 oil at 600 degrees gives out only a blue lambent flame easilv put 

 out, or a continuous one most ungovernable and with great dif- 

 ficulty extinguished, mav be very easily proved. 



The next point of difference is the length of time necessary 

 to heat oil, — the one partvstating that it would require eight or ten 

 hours with great difficulty to bring it from a safe to a dangerous 

 point ; the other, that it mav be effected without anv difficidty 

 at all in twenty minutes. I should observe here, that there is 

 no detail of any experiment on the side of the plaintiffs, to prove 

 the fact which they have stated ; for the trifling attempt at heat- 

 ing oil over an Argand lamp, where the radiation of heat when 

 the oil arrived at a certain temperature kept pace with that 

 emitted from the lamp, is no proof at all; but I do not recol- 

 lect anv statement having been given of its being tried with a 

 fire under the boiler with the express view of ascertaining that 

 point : their endeavour was to keep the oil at a temperature 

 below 360 degrees. But on the other hand the fact has been 

 proved in six or seven public experiments, where in a boiler con- 

 structed upon the model of the one used by the plaintiffs, with a 



fire- 



